Today's News

Built on Vision Critical's customer intelligence platform, the Sports Fan Council solution revolutionizes how sports teams engage today's digitally-savvy fans for insight, according to company.Now sports teams can harness the collective wisdom of their fans to tackle key business challenges.

Vancouver, BC, March 16, 2015--(T-Net)--Vision Critical, developers of a leading customer intelligence platform, announced that they have recently launched a new solution called Sports Fan Council, to "transform fan intelligence for the age of the empowered customer".

As fans continue to consume sports entertainment across a variety of digital platforms, traditional revenue models are breaking down, according to the company.

The Sports Fan Council solution is designed to help sports organizations address the key business challenges affecting teams today, including declining ticket sales, decreased fan engagement and loyalty, fragmented corporate and media partnerships, and stagnant merchandise sales.

“The global sports market is being affected by the convergence of new audiences, mobile and digital technologies, and the economic environment,” said Andrew Reid, president, founder and chief product officer of Vision Critical. “More than ever, teams need to better understand their fans to strengthen fan engagement and enhance media partnerships. Sports Fan Council is the first solution in the customer intelligence space that allows teams to foster ongoing engagement with fans for actionable insight.”“Sports teams face very different business challenges than other industries,” said Kobi Ofir, chief technology officer of Vision Critical. “We designed Sports Fan Council so that teams can strengthen fan engagement, optimize ticketing offers, increase the value of corporate and media partnerships and leverage fan creativity to generate new merchandise opportunities—all by asking precise questions and performing valuable analysis that will drive better business decisions and results.”“For the New York Knicks, fan engagement and satisfaction are critically important, which is why we turned to the Vision Critical customer intelligence platform,” said Steve Sherman, vice president, consumer insights at the Madison Square Garden company.

“Through our online insight community, we're able to capture feedback from thousands of fans to help us deliver a world-class experience. In this fast-paced and competitive industry, we've been able to exceed in all areas when it comes to the fan experience by turning to our New York Knicks and newly launched New York Rangers online fan communities for input and insight. In the past year, the Knicks Fan Panel has been used to better understand everything from our fans' music preferences and the types of entertainment that drive in-game engagement, to the kinds of food and beverages they want served at games.”

ABOVE: Demo Sports Fan Council log-in page for fans

BELOW: Demo Sports Fan Council welcome page for fans

The Sports Fan Council Solution Transforms Fan Engagement for the Digital Age

The North American sports market is expected to grow to $70.7 billion in 2018, according to PwC. Sports organizations are increasingly under pressure to deliver the ultimate fan experience in a new and challenging media landscape. Unlike in previous decades, sports fans now have many local and global entertainment options available to them through a variety of media outlets. Today's empowered customers are also extremely mobile, demanding on-the-go viewing selections.

The Sports Fan Council solution is an online community made up of thousands of fans and used by teams to capture feedback over time in order to make improvements and enrich the fan experience.

The solution is programmed with fan engagement activities and analysis in order to help teams increase fan satisfaction and loyalty, improve ticket sales, maintain and secure corporate and media partnerships, and leverage fan creativity to improve existing products and effectively release new ones.

Sports teams using the Sports Fan Council solution will experience the benefits of having a two-way dialogue with their fans for insight used to influence impactful decisions, according to the company. The solution allows teams to build member profiles for fans as they evolve, deploy regular fan engagement projects, leverage the sports fan intelligence library pre-programmed with fan activities created to address the key challenge areas for sports teams, analyze member feedback and share actionable insight with key stakeholders to drive better business outcomes.

Award-winning company based in Vancouver that provides market research software and services to over 600 clients worldwide, including 1/3 of the world's top 100 brands, with offices in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia.